


Vipers

by pr0nz69



Category: Tokyo Ghoul
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Drabble, Gen, Hallucinations, Implied/Referenced Torture, Introspection, Self-Destruction, Stream of Consciousness, femdom undertones
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-10
Updated: 2019-12-10
Packaged: 2021-02-26 07:07:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 604
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21749521
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pr0nz69/pseuds/pr0nz69
Summary: If he bares his fangs, if he bites his handler, if he flees his cage, then what will be waiting for him, once it’s all said and done?“Freedom.”The word is the filthiest taboo.—Rize Kamishiro is a viper.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 9





	Vipers

**Author's Note:**

> Ken Kaneki is an emotionally complex character. Thank you for coming to my Ted Talks.

Lately, Rize Kamishiro won’t get out of his head.

She comes, usually, in his quiet times, the spaces between “sessions” when head-splitting agony won’t drag him under the threshold of consciousness. She comes as she always has, with swagger and a sneer and that domineering arrogance that makes him bristle because he’s never been able to prove her wrong.

And as much as he wants to, her words have a persuasive fire to them that feeds off the kindling called experience, and lately, he has a lot to burn.

His jaw burns. Today, a vivisection—an incision from cheek to chin, a mockery of a half-smile.

Rize points it out in her brazenly reckless way: “Are you happy, Kaneki?”

A fingernail traces along the mark; it makes him stir in his restraints. Rize strokes his hair as if in comfort, but he’s seen the viper already; she’s never made an effort to hide it away and wears it around her neck like a chain of pearls.

“Isn’t this what you wanted? To take all the pain of others onto yourself? You’re living your dearest desire!”

The way she takes things from him, tears them from his core in strips and perverts them—he hates that most of all. He can’t fight her when she’s cut her shield out of his own battered heart.

She coils her arms around his shoulders, resting her head against his neck. “You wanted this,” she whispers.

He parts his lips, maybe to laugh or sob, and his jaw burns. He tastes the tang of blood and spits it like venom. Maybe he should be a viper. It’s not in his nature, and even his own corpse chained to the chair shudders in protest, but—

“You can change.”

He could change. He isn’t immutable, as a human, as a ghoul—

“You can do what you want. You can be free.”

He wheezes out a laugh—a death rattle, or a warning trill. A better experiment would leave him cut in half; the symbolism is something he can appreciate even now.

And Rize is right again; he can be free, if only he casts off his tethers. He forces his hands into fists and twists them in their bonds. The skin is peeled back, rubbed raw, not for lack of trying. It’s something else keeping him rooted; he’s aware enough to know that.

The rotting flower of his humanity sucks on rocks and gravel, drowns in downpours, but a strong enough wind might just snap the stem clean in two, and Rize is a tempest.

She nuzzles his neck. “You’re such a good boy. Why don’t you show me those fangs of yours?” She pulls back his bottom lip. “Or are you telling me that mask of yours was just a silly costume?”

It would suit him—ever since he was young, he’s been a performer. Audience after audience, a tamed amusement, dancing for the pleasure of every unknown face there, but for himself—no, to think of himself would be—

“You deserve to be a little selfish.”

If he bares his fangs, if he bites his handler, if he flees his cage, then what will be waiting for him, once it’s all said and done?

“ _Freedom_.”

The word is the filthiest taboo.

Rize doesn’t care. She sinks her teeth into his shoulder. Time doesn’t mean much here, but in all of a moment, the skin swells up, blackens. Necrotic, like him. Dying.

He’s dying.

“You want to live.” Her teeth are black with his blood when she smiles. 

He has nothing to say.

She unhinges her jaw, and devours him.


End file.
